Study: UChicago First-Years Suffer from Lack of Penis Graffiti

By Anna Newport

Feb. 24, 2013

A new study commissioned by the Office of the Dean of Students’ has concluded that many of the academic and personal problems experienced by first-year students stem from the lack of erotica drawn on tables and desks. Researchers involved with the study anticipated that first-years’ shortcomings were caused by poor study habits, adjustment to college life, and lack of quality high-school teaching due to funding cuts. Instead, the study attributed most of first-years’ general cluelessness to their inability to recognize academic furniture that is unsullied by graffiti, predominately penises.

“In high school I had it down pat,” said concerned first-year Sarah Woodward, “I would always sit down and place my economics textbook on the wooden block covered in graphic images. It was that simple. Here, I don’t know where to sit.”

A 2011 study by the U.S. Department of Education concluded that 77% of the surface area of desks at U.S. public high schools was covered with etched erotic drawings, initials and words. More than three-fourths of such markings were judged crude or pornographic by the department.

The lack of such images on the desks in classrooms at UChicago left first-years in utter confusion. “The study found that many students stopped attending classes and wouldn’t study because they believed the school was not supplying them with tables to work at,” said Margaret Birch, lead researcher on the study, which is titled “Where’s the Penis? Insights into Substandard Behavioral Patterns Among University of Chicago First Year Students.”

Adhoc solutions such as standing in the corner of the Reg and reading on treadmills proved insufficient and exhausting. In an interview with the Shady Dealer, Mrs. Birch suggested that signs such as “This is a desk” placed on academic furniture might ease the first-years’ confusion. “The faculty might also consider using small temporary drawings of penises with washable markers to help the students with the transition into adult furniture,” she said.

According to the study, students indicated they could accept desks without full-out desktop porn. In a recent poll conducted by the Tea Time and Sex Chats RSO, 49% of students said they could live with some variation of the normative penis model. “I wouldn’t even mind if they brought in other sexually explicit images or engraved mere crude language into the wooden structure. I just need some sort of indicator. Otherwise, I am completely lost,” said Sam Mahogany.

Students who attended private schools, where salaciously defaced furniture is rare, were almost entirely unaffected by the lack of penis drawings, the study concluded.